Monday, January 23, 2012

Yes, I still occasionally call my eleven year old Drewy. This weekend has been a little more stressful for him and I am not sure why. His anxiety on Saturday and Sunday has been higher. I recently reported that he was doing well with showers, but Saturday and Sunday he screamed and cried through them.

I, myself have not been sleeping well. I have gastritis now and that makes laying down uncomfortable. Plus my recent weight loss has cause a new,irritating phenomen--my knees clanking together. Ok, so they don't actually clank, but it is not comfortable, either. I don't remember having this problem when I was a skinny kid.

I went to bed at eleven and tossed and turned and got up and took Melatonin and went back to bed to toss and turn some more. At 12:30, I finally fell asleep. At least, that's the last time I remember seeing on the clock.

Ok, so this post is not really about me. Last night, Drew went to bed ok. He got up a couple times to go to the bathroom or to ask to be covered up or whatnot but went to sleep within a half hour or so. At 2:00, Drew started crying and called out for me. I went to see what was wrong and he was sitting on his bed, crying. He asked to go to the bathroom, which he did, but then when I tried to direct him back to his bed, he started crying again saying, "I'm scared!" and asked to watch tv. I told him it was in the middle of the night and we needed to go back to sleep. I offered to lay down with him, to which he replied, "No, it's my bed." He said his nose hurt and his throat hurt and he couldn't go to school tomorrow. He said he needed to stay home with me. He is not sick.

I felt really bad for him because he was obviously upset. And he was communicating with me, which is good. He used to just wake up crying and I don't think I ever heard him say, "I'm scared" before. We went into the toyroom and I put Blue's Clues on for him and sat down next to him. He shooed me off to bed, though because sitting next to him while he watches Blue's Clues is not typical for me. Not the regular morning routine. I told him that when the show was over, he had to go back to bed.

I went back to bed and must have dozed off, because it was three in the moring when he came in my room saying my name. He wanted to watch something else. I told him no, that he had to go back to bed. Well, he didn't like that one bit and started to cry. Well, Eric is usually the one who plays bad cop in our house, so he told Drew to cut it out and go to bed. Drew cried in his bed for 10-15 minutes and fell asleep. It was hard for me not to go back in there, but I knew as soon as I did, he'd be back up again.

He slept until almost 7:30 this morning and looked pretty tired. I increased his dose of his Arbaclofen this morning to 10 mg. I am hoping this will help with his anxiety. Maybe his body was just getting used to the 5mg and decided it wasn't enough to do the trick. I don't know. I hate when parenting is hard!

1 comments:

That was a rough night - for both of you! It is such a helpless feeling to want to help our children but not know exactly how to help them. In those situations, along with trying to figure out how to specifically help my child in need, my goal is to make sure they feel loved and hope that will help them cope.

I hope the increased dosage helps, that you get some relief for your pain, and that tonight is a better night!